Communities: Activity Email Notifications

You and your students can receive email notifications for any post activity in a Community by following posts! You also have the option to turn off all Community notifications.

How It Works

You and your students can follow posts to receive email notifications for comment activity on posts! You can always unfollow a post if you no longer want to receive email notifications for that post or turn off all Community notifications entirely.

When a new post is created, the Site Owner, Site Admins and the creator of the post will automatically be added as followers. If you prefer that the Site Owner and Site Admins do not automatically follow new posts, this can be customized in your site settings, which is covered below.

If you are looking to notify students when they are first added to a community, check out Send a Community Welcome Email.

Email Notifications

Emails from Thinkific are sent from noreply@notify.thinkific.com or notifications@notify.thinkific.com. If you are using Email White Labelling, students will receive emails from the custom email domain you have set up with Thinkific.

Community activity emails will include a direct link to the Community. For example:

How to Manage Community Notifications for the Site Owner and Site Admins

You have the following options for managing your Community notifications:

New posts: Receive an email when someone creates a new post in a community
Auto-follow new posts: Keep track of new posts and comments as they are created

How to Turn On Your Community Notifications

Go to Users
Select Notification Emails
Select the Admin Notifications tab
Click Student Engagement section on the left
Optional: Under Communities, click the toggle beside New posts
Optional: Click the toggle beside Auto-follow new posts

Updates to these settings will apply to the Site Owner and all Site Admins. We do not currently have the option to customize this per Site Admin. For more granular control per user, make sure to turn your notifications on and simply follow or unfollow specific posts!

How to Manage Notifications for Students

Students will receive notifications for activity on posts they are following by default. Learn more here: Community Guide for Students

If your student would like to turn off Community notifications entirely, they can do this from within a Community or their account settings. Learn more here: How can students turn off email notifications?

Note that you must be on Site Builder theme version 1.18.0 or higher for students to see the option to disable Community notifications from their general account settings. On earlier theme versions, they will still be able to turn off notifications within the Community.

Summary of Notification Rules

You will receive notifications for any activity (comments) on a post if you are currently a follower.
By default, Site Owners and Site Admins will receive a notification when a new post is created unless turned off in notification settings (see above).
Site Owner and Site Admins will automatically be added as followers to new posts unless turned off in notification settings (see above).
At the moment, Community Moderators will not receive community notifications when a post or a comment is made in a community they moderate.
Course Admins will not automatically be added as followers to new posts, which means they will not get notifications by default. They will need to follow the post to start getting notifications.
For all Community users, adding a comment to an existing post will not automatically follow that post. You will need to follow the post to start getting notifications.
If you want to receive notifications for a post that you are not currently following, you can follow the post.
If you no longer want to receive notifications for a post, you can unfollow the post.
Students will automatically be added as followers to their own posts and receive notifications by default. They can choose to turn off all notifications within the Community or within their account settings.
If you edit a community post and mention a user as part of the edit, the user will only receive a web notification (under the bell icon) and not a notification email.